New Image Of Chloe Moretz and Kodi Smit-Mcphee From LET ME IN And Director Matt Reeves Defends The Vampire Remake

On Friday we posted the first image of actress Chloe Moretz (the notoriously potty-mouthed Hit Girl in Kick-Ass) from the vampire coming-of-age drama Let Me In. Due in theatres this fall, the film is also known online as “the totally unnecessary remake” of the 2008 Swedish movie Let The Right One In. I’m not here to tell you how to feel about Swedish vampire movies or their remakes. I am here to tell you that a new image from the film is now online which features Moretz and co-star Kodi Smit-Mcphee (The Road). Hit the jump for a better look and to hear director Matt Reeves defend his remake.

The LA Times posted a new image from Let Me In this weekend alongside an interview with the film’s director Matt Reeves (Cloverfield). It seems that Reeves has heard the complaints about his remake and he is anxious to explain himself… in the most polite and approval-seeking way possible.

“It’s not going to feel like a movie with a crazy number of effects,” Reeves said. “It’s, hopefully, going to feel like an intimate coming-of-age story.”

Why the backlash? Even people who spend a great deal of time bemoaning the rise of the Twilight Nation over the past two years admit that Let The Right One In was the one entry in the recent surge of blood-sucking features that didn’t completely suck. During its limited release back in the 2008 the dark coming-of-age-fable carried the torch for the serious and artful vamp flick once epitomized by films like The Hunger. But as a Scandinavian import, few Americans got a chance to see the original. And the English-language revamp was born.

So, how does Reeves feel about the hearing that the guy from Cloverfield is bound to ruin the only new vampire movie worth watching?

“I think because of ‘Cloverfield,’ people have an assumption, which is, ‘Oh, crazy handicam… And that’s the last thing we tried to do. We tried to create the approaching, foreboding dread of movies like ‘The Shining,’ where you feel like something wicked is unraveling and it’s not going to end well. That’s what I responded to about the original… this very disturbing story but at the center of it there are these very tender emotions. That’s a very unusual mix, and that’s what drew me in…”

I spoke to Reeves during the press tour for Cloverfield and I got the impression that he’s a man who devotes a lot of thought to what he puts on the page (he also wrote the Let Me In screenplay) and, ultimately, on the screen. At this point fans of Let The Right One In can only hope that he thought his way into making a film that does not embarrass the genre… as if things could get worse than New Moon.